NIDA closes its 60th year with the third season of student productions, The Festival of Emerging Artists, featuring seven unique productions every night across four evenings in December.
NIDA closes its 60th year with the third season of student productions, The Festival of Emerging Artists, featuring seven unique productions every night across four evenings in December.
The season features:
- a student adaptation of the award-winning French film Amélie;
- the first fully-realised stage production of When Vampires Shop, a political comedy first read at Sydney Theatre Company;
- Pagliacci, a new arrangement adapted and directed by Justice Jones;
- Flora, a newly devised Australian premiere based around Fulbright Indigenous scholarship poet Alison Whittaker;
- a reinterpretation of Goethe’s Faust;
- a contemporary staging of Brecht’s iconic A Respectable Wedding; and
- award-winning Australian playwright Nick Enright’s Miracle City, set in an evangelical TV show.
The season is created by the final year students of NIDA’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (Design for Performance) course and Master of Fine Arts (Directing) course and includes the students across all disciplines at NIDA including BFA students in Technical Theatre and Stage Management, Properties and Objects, Costume and several Acting students.
‘This is our third season of student productions in our 60th anniversary year at NIDA and we couldn’t be more excited to showcase the immense talent, innovation and skills of our students,’ said NIDA Executive Director Conservatoire, Dr Amanda Morris.
‘The productions provide an insight into the direction of storytelling that the next generation of Australian performing artists are exploring. We invite you to enjoy the wide range of pieces including drama, comedy, opera, musical and dance theatre which form the Festival of Emerging Artists this year.’
Dates: The Nick Enright Festival of Emerging Artists at NIDA opens on Wednesday 11 December and runs until Saturday 14 December with all shows running every night from 7-9pm across three NIDA theatres.
When Vampires Shop
By Melissa Bubnic, Directed by Flynn Hall, Designed by Stephanie Dunlop
A woman asks life’s biggest questions as she wrestles with her uncontrollable desire to purchase a luxury handbag. Melissa Bubnic’s new political comedy is a hilarious and honest discussion of consumerist culture in contemporary Australia.
Amélie
A student production based on the screenplay by Guillaume Laurant and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Adapted and directed by Miranda Middleton, Designed by Hannah Sitters
Amélie is a boldly theatrical adaptation of the much-loved French film, underscored live by an original arrangement of Yann Tiersen’s score. Set in bohemian Paris in the 1990s, it tells the story of a socially awkward young woman as she finds the courage to take a leap of faith and fall in love.
Faust
By Sam Trotman inspired by Goethe’s Faust (Part One), Directed by Sam Trotman, Designed by Angela Doherty
Wild and darkly funny, this new work re-interprets the Faust myth for the present moment. At the limits of scientific understanding � Faust is still miserable. He turns to magick and conjures the demon Mephistopheles. They make a bargain: Faust will get pleasure and power beyond his wildest dreams � the cost… his soul.
A Respectable Wedding
By Bertolt Brecht, translation by Jean Benedetti, Directed by Tait de Lorenzo, Designed by Angus Konsti
Welcome to middle-class hell. A Respectable Wedding is a dark, satirical comedy, and one of Brecht’s earliest works. This contemporary staging of the text aims to expose the strange, toxic and often secretive patterns inherent in conventional heterosexual marriage and family life.
An Amateur Production by Arrangement with ORiGiN™ Theatrical on behalf of the RIGHTS HOLDER.
Miracle City
By Nick Enright, music by Max Lambert, Directed by Hayden Tonazzi, Designed by Hamish Elliot
Miracle City is a musical about Ricky and Lora Lee Truswell’s calling to God � a religious theme park where you ‘pray before you play’. Set on a Sunday-morning evangelical TV show; the moment they go live-to-air the truth behind their sickening smiles is revealed…
Pagliacci
By Ruggero Leoncavallo, A new arrangement by Justice Jones, Libretto/Surtitles adapted by Michael Costi, Directed by Justice Jones, Designed by Meiko Wong
What you’re about to see is a true story, clowns have feelings too. Pagliacci (Clowns) tells the story of an actor who struggles to separate himself from the character he plays on stage. How far do you have to go until people take you seriously?
Flora
By Forever Tupou and the company, Directed by Forever Tupou, Designed by Keerthi Subramanyam
Flora is a premiere devised dance-theatre work inspired by the poetry of award-winning Australian writer Alison Whittaker.
Tickets are live here.
